The Once And Future King Character Analysis

Ants, ferocious warriors, brave soldiers going off to battle to protect the Queen and banding together as one unit. This admired trait appears in popular culture, from kids movies such as A Bug’s Life to, more recently, Marvel’s Ant Man. However, T.H. White’s The Once and Future King illustrates an entirely different view of the ant culture. In this, these tiny soldiers are enslaved under their commander the Queen and lose their ability to produce an original thought. While Wart learns an important lesson among the ants,White gives us clues on the lesson and his general feelings towards war. He does this with character development and syntax, and illustrating the importance of words and how they affect war, both in our world and in Wart’s .

Wart’s character development in this lesson is a clear clue to White’s anti-war feelings, beginning with a more war-positive outlook but changing as the lesson progresses.

In other lessons, Wart says he “likes fighting” and thinks “it is knightly” (170). However, in this lesson, Wart experiences what war is like, in person. From the moment he becomes an ant, Wart has had voices in his head, making statements such as “‘June-noon-moon-spoon’” (122). This constant stream of babble is neverending, and Wart is unable to produce an original thought. As he spends more time among the ants, a war breaks out, and “mammy-mammy- mammy gave place to Antland, Antland Over All” (128). This constant stream of nonsense and war propaganda negatively affects Wart “ The [Stream of Voices] had begun to kill the joy of life which belonged to his boyhood” (130). This destroying of innocence and boyhood by war reveals that White is against war and the sending off of young men to fight in a battle without really understanding

why.
Wart’s opinions begin to change, even if he does not realize it until after he has also been a goose, learning and enjoying their peaceful ways. In a conversation with Badger, Badger asks him“‘Which did you like best...the ants or the geese?’” (194). This question,left unanswered, prompts the reader to think. Though not stated, Wart enjoyed his time with the geese more and their peaceful ways. Because of this important lesson, Wart will realize that he does not like war, and that the act of fighting is not as knightly as he once believed. This will carry into his reign, where he ushers in a time of peace never seen before in Camelot.
Though we have always believed ants to be primitive, they actually are a highly developed culture with an understanding of a power of words.

Using syntax, the ants manipulate their words to support their war effort. This decision by White to give the ants this ability shows that he understands the power of words when it comes to war. The ants understand this too, and above their tunnel, a sign states that “EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY” (122). This language may seem uncomfortable and foreign to us, but it has a powerful message on the way the ants live. White emphasises “COMPULSORY” (122), and this message clues us in that the ant’s society is a communistic one, one that T.H. White is clearly against as depicted by Wart’s feelings of “dislike, even if he didn’t understand the meaning” (122). But while words such as these present White’s message, the lack of words also expresses his opinion. While among the ants, Wart discovers that he cannot express his thoughts,’in fact, all that he can express is “Done or Not Done” (124). “There were no words for happiness, for freedom, for liking, nor were their any words for their opposites” (124) in this society, leaving Wart the inability to speak out against what he thought was clearly wrong. This relates to the real world, where privates cannot speak out against their commanders without being punished, and some do not even realize what they are doing wrong. By limiting ants to just these words, the Queen has absolute power,

and absolute power corrupts. These ants have no emotion, and nothing phases them, and even during war they do not see the atrocities of propaganda and killing as “good or bad, rational or terrible. They did not look at them at all, but accepted them as Done” (130). The emphasis placed on these few words by White depicts how the Queen is able to control her subjects without any fear of mutiny, and how awful it is to have that power over someone. By reducing the ants to only simple thoughts, he uses the lack of syntax to show how they are unable to have morals and values. Since they have no morals, the Queen has an army of ruthless soldiers who will easily kill at her command. This communistic, singled thought community relates to the Nazi reign as well as Stalin’s, both thriving during the time that White was writing.
In this lesson, Wart learns the power of words and how they can affect war, and develops as a character by doing so. This development will turn him into the King he is meant to be and influences him to rule fairly, letting his subjects making their own choices. This lesson is pivotal for changing Wart from someone who admires fighting to someone who realizes the real cost, which would be very important in his reign. This also conveys White’s anti-war feelings during the time of Hitler, a man who could manipulate his words to make people believe the most terrible of atrocities. It also emphasizes for Wart, and the reader, the importance of words, a constant reminder that “power springs from the nape of the neck” (52).